Occupy NRA? SHTF? Gun Prohibition? We Live in Interesting Times . . .

In the post-Sandy Hook slaughter political environment, gun control advocates are growing in both size and stridency. The newly formed Facebook page Occupy the NRA has 22,577 likes. However ad hoc, the group’s got it’s S together enough to organize protestors at gun shows like yesterday’s Stamford, Connecticut event. [NB: When TTAG reporters polled Occupy Wall Street protesters around the U.S., the vast majority were pro-2A.] More anti-gun Twitter sites are appearing, and they’re Tweeting like mad (MADD?). The group that was defining the “debate”—The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence—is being left in the dust, internet update-wise. No question: the campaign to infringe upon your constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is gaining momentum. Meanwhile, TTAG and dozens of pro-gun internet sites are mobilizing gun rights advocates. A small but highly active part of this coalition is already planning for defeat . . .

After a number of carefully-planned, highly-publicized, and successful raids by the government, one or more will invariably end “badly.” Whether innocents are gunned down, a city block is burned to ash, or especially fierce resistance leads to a disastrously failed raid doesn’t particularly matter. What matters is that when illusion of the government’s invincibility and infallibility is broken, the hunters will become the hunted.

Unnamed citizens and federal agents will be the first to die, and they will die by the dozens and maybe hundreds, but famous politicians will soon join them in a spate of revenge killings, many of which will go unsolved.

Bob Owens’ nightmare scenario grows increasingly, uh, nightmarish. While I’m not saying his dystopian view of Amerika’s future couldn’t happen, I’m not sure it will. It’s gun rights advocates’ job to do everything in their power, legally, now, to make sure it doesn’t.

But one thing’s for sure: as the fight for gun rights heats up, the mainstream media will focus in on militias members, preppers and SHTF survivalists like a cruel child with a magnifying glass over an ant hill. It happened after the Giffords’ shooting. It’s gonna happen again.

But once we’re predicting things, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to imagine that Americans will NOT register their guns. They will NOT turn them in. OK, some will. And some will turn in some guns. But just as they did during Prohibition, Americans will disobey the law and keep their “illegal” guns.

As they do already, both here and abroad. Writer and self-admitted [former] illegal gun owner J.D. Tuccille has an excellent piece on the subject at reason.com:

In fact, New York City’s situation with guns is mirrored in Europe, where countries with tight restrictions also find themselves awash in illegal firearms without any clear parallels for the relatively liberal laws of Virginia or South Carolina to blame. According to the Small Arms Survey (PDF) at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland:

Contrary to widely-accepted national myths, public gun ownership is commonplace in most European states. It may appear to some outside observers—especially Americans—that Europeans have blindly surrendered their gun rights (Heston, 2002). The reality is that the citizens of most European countries are better armed than they realize. …

Regulations tightly control gun ownership in only a few European countries like the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom. In much of the rest of the continent, public officials readily admit that unlicensed owners and unregistered guns greatly outnumber legal ones. …

Even those numbers may understate the case. While the 2003 Small Arms Survey report put the number of legal guns in Greece at 805,000 and illegal guns at 350,000, just two years later, the Greek government itself nudged those figures up, just a tad, to one million legal guns and 1.5 million illegal ones.

I don’t think there’s any way the United States government can take on American gun owners without major blowback. Reading the e-tea leaves, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Governors Cuomo and Quinn, all the pro-gun control pols have a tiger by the tail. The Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” applies.

65 Responses to Occupy NRA? SHTF? Gun Prohibition? We Live in Interesting Times . . .

That was not my experience in speaking with members of that movement. While some were libertarians, the majority wanted:

1) Governmental intervention into the economy on a vast neverbeforeseen scale
2) Massive redistribution of wealth. One gentlemen told me he wanted every person in America who makes over 100m a year publicly executed
3) I asked specific questions about guns and gun control and with the few libertarian exceptions already mentioned, the responses were a mix of more gun control and repeal the second amendment.

Also had one or two folks tell me that the jews were to blame for basically all of the world’s problems. While I understand the “movement” was diverse, my experiences with this particular crowd I spoke to completely alienated me against it. OWS can FOAD. To me it was a melting pot of all the worst parts of progressivism.

I used to regularly post on Democratic Underground before being banned for being a “gun nut”, and the support there for the Occupy movement from the anti-freedom Far Left was (and is) quite strident. From everything I’ve seen, the Occupy movement is (with rare exceptions) against Constitutional rights in general.

Just to be clear, I am the “Hal” that posts regularly on this site. I wrote the “that was not my experience” post at 0928. I am not the “Hal” who posted about the democratic underground, although I am not disagreeing with his content.

As must of us already know, gun control is about cultural modification, not crime control. The anti’s don’t care about the hardware;rather, they wish to use the legal system to marginalize gun ownership into a cultural taboo.

Im amazed at the stories my ma tells me of Grandpa taking her shooting back in the mid 1970s in suburban Chicago IL. Today its actually illegal for her to so much as touch a gun without a state issued ID card and background check. I had to fly her up to South Dakota to take her back to the range, and she re-discovered the joy of the firing range.

THAT is what the anti’s want to ban, not AR15s or pistols. Once gun ownership is considered as reprobate as being a child molester, the anti’s work is done. They won’t care that you have 100 guns buried under the floorboards, because if you tell or show anyone else they’ll rat you out as a danger to society.

I agree. The anti-gun forces would likely be quite satisfied with transforming a major portion of their political opponents into felons who, not supporting new gun controls, choose to forego registration and become vulnerable to selective prosecution at the government’s whim.

This way the new gun control laws become just another of the thousands of laws that law abiding citizens knowingly (or more likely, unknowingly) violate every day. When someone comes under government scrutiny, the government has one more tool in their chest for making the problem person go away – either by incarceration (with lengthy minimum sentences) or in a hail of gunfire during a no-knock raid.

The mistake I see many of my fellow 2A colleagues making, is turning this into a clear cut, partisan issue, Liberals vs Conservatives or Libertarians. Thats just the wrong way to go.

Just like a ton of other politicol subjects, no single issue defines someones politicol persuasion. And if we want to continue to grow our ranks, we need to learn to be more inclusive. I know a few Libs who are 2A proponents. I know more then a few conservatives who are buying into the whole, hunters vs AR shooters arguements and Feinsteins 2A interpretation.

And as I mentioned elsewhere, we need to start comming up with a few organized, passive resistence options for the most likely legislation to be shoved down our throats. And organize a few protests of our own.

Can you imagine a million gun owners march on D.C. , with delegates from state coalitions scheduled to visit every congressman and senator to present the gun owners side of the argument. That would be interesting.

Good luck with that, they ‘tried’ it back in spring ’10, and got about 2k people to show up, if that….the ‘so-called’ march was mocked in the left wing media. You actually think anything different will happen this time?

Guns across America is organizing a peaceful, law abiding protest across the US on Jan 19th 12pm local time. Each protest is to take at each State Capitol Building or as close as possible.
Each state organizer is getting the word out via Facebook,twitter, etc.
We cannot stress enough that this is a Peaceful, law abiding protest.
If your state will allow open or concealed carry during a protest and it is allowed in the vicinity of a state Capitol building then by all means carry. If it is not allowed then don’t!!
If you live in Arkansas and need more info please contact me at:speedracer50-50@hotmail.com
Check on FB for Guns Across America and the gentlemans name is Eric Reed!!
We may get lucky in AR in that one of the participants is a personal friend of the Lt. Governor and may be able to get him to speak on our behalf at the gathering!!

When you drive the economy down so that people have a lot of time and no money, and you have a trillion dollars in TARP funds to dole out as political favors, why am I not surprised that protest groups can be organized so quickly?

Yes, we need to make the White House, Congress and all of the state legislatures realize that what they are proposing will not end well for anyone. They need to know that they are not playing with fire, they are playing with nitroglycerine.

Why don’t we do that? Organize a march, not just for our god-given 2A, but for all intrustions of the constitution. We need t stop talking abut it and do it! The march would probably be larger then any seen for ages. I believe we’re on the knife’s edge of losing all of our rights and I believe it is tme we show the govies that their crimes against our rights have not gone unnoticed. We need to show up en masse and make our voices heard. Make it (peacefully) loud enough that the media can’t ignore it. I’ve never been to a protest before, but for that Id actually show up. I would actually miss work for that. I believe it would have the numbers not seen since the civil liberties marches.

‘The reality is that the citizens of most European countries are better armed than they realize.”

Two things. 1) Gun control has existed long enough that i would hazard to claim a high probability that most of those guns are WWI/II relics, i.e. not many modern firearms. 2) There open use for defense, or otherwise, is greatly stifled if not completely neutered by the presence and threat of that gun control, making ownership of those arms moot.

These movements are small but very loud. Like many protest movements they make up for their lack of numbers in sheer volume. They can easily be overwhelmed where in counts, in the offices of lawmakers.

What we have to be careful of is admitting defeat to easily. The media has already decreased coverage, but what coverage they have will continue to paint gun owners in a negative light. This is an ongoing operation to demoralize viewpoints that don’t agree with theirs. The media will enable these small movements and ignore the fact that Americans are for gun ownership in great majorities. Even the polls have swung away from the government doing anything.

Let these movements rant and rave, they don’t represent the mainstream views.

Stay vigilant, this battle is far from won. The odds are in our favor, don’t back down.

I have been reading that the Obama Administration is planning to use campaign-style tactics to keep focus on gun control efforts. This means agressive use of social media. It does not take much effort to realize that we (and I mean this as the collective pro-2A demographic) are way behind the curve in that arena. I believe this is because much of our base is in the “over 40” crowd and are not very techno-savvy; I am one of those people as I am 42 and still use a $10 flip phone.

As much as it sickens me to admit, we really need to take a page from the regime’s playbook and start aggressively exploiting technology to get the message across!! Otherwise, I am afraid we will face a very slow and painful death (in the figurative sense, that is…)

And that is why almost every day, I post at least one pro-gun item on Facebook for all to see and go on different websites / forums and argue against gun control using facts. Not to mention debates with friends and doing what I can to get more people into shooting.

Even tho we have disagreed on other things on this I am with you Brother!!
We have got to fight and use the same tools they do(media,social media,etc) against them as they do us daily!!
One other thing we have to watch is being peaceful!! Let them spit, spew and froth while we remain calm and cool until the time to be otherwise comes upon us!!

Speedracer at our rally if there are anti’s I will personally invite them up to speak.
I have to do some serious cramming to get me Bruce Frafft – foo in order, but while you can’t change their minds, you can civilly retort and make them look like idiots!!!!

Push back hard on social media. Browbeat anyone who keeps spamming you with gun control memes, post your own (polite, reasoned and preferably original-by-you) counterpoints and try to moderate a good discussion. My feed quieted down quite a bit after I did that..

38, and an IT ops/Telecommunications and hardware SME. Everything from On-Demand computing, Fiber, DAXs, IT security and IA. I’d offer my time if we had a single cohesive message to get behind. The NRA actually offers opportunities to organize communities. Broken links and expired resources. Sad. Just sad. I’m very dissapointed with the PR campaign of the NRA and their media effectiveness. Or lack there of.

I also found that to be true of the Facebook crowd. Much like a spree shooter that kills himself upon first contact with opposition, most Facebook crusaders will spew their malformed opinions and half-truths until they run into the hard brick wall that is someone who knows how to factually and coherently argue against them. Once that happens, they quiet down considerably and the pace of their posting slows quite a bit.

I may be a fool, but I have a hard time imagining the Republican controlled house passing anything too egregious. Letting a widespread gun ban pass would be the end of the Republican party. In fact I think the Democrats know very well they won’t get any action on this and are only raising it to divert the subject away from the upcoming battle on the debt ceiling. The “war on guns” is the new “war on women”.

Many might refuse to register, but so what? Look what happened to machine guns after NFA. There are propably still unregistered ones out there, but new ones are generally cost prohibited. After several generations of being regulated, the average gun owner does not have a machine gun. The same will happen with “assualt weapons.” The anti-gun strategy is long term. It must be stopped before it can take root. Folks should have resisted in 34, then again in 68. If they had, maybe we wouldn’t be facing the same choice now.

Actually, sale of new production automatic weapons to subjects, as opposed to rulers, has been outlawed since 1986, I believe. I’m ashamed to say I had to ask recently, and still don’t know whether that was a law or regulation, and also ashamed that was in the middle of Reagan. But “new” auto or select-fire firearms have been unaccessible for you and me for 28 years now. That’s why they are “cost prohibitive”, there is a limited supply. Get ahold of a catalog for LEO, and you discover that otherwise identical, brand new AR-15s differ by less than $100 between semi and select fire.

The Occupy people i personally know are vehemently supportive of the 2nd amendment and free enterprise: they are protesting corporatism and corruption of our political processes as well as the impending assault on our civil liberties.

these few fringe threads of the occupy movement (i dont even associate the two) give the whole movement a bad name and, ironically, opposes the very idea of freedom theyre supposed to represent. dumbasses.

I’ve met one or two anarchist Occupy people, but the overwhelming majority I’ve met have been borderline, or even open, communists. They weren’t in favor of gun ownership (by anyone other then them personally and their close friends,) or any other form of personal responsibility.

In regards to social media, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the support I’ve seen (and received) to anti-gun control posts. I’ve also noticed that comments to numerous anti-gun articles have been almost all pro-2A responses. So I believe there is hope. And since we obviously don’t have the mainstream media giving us any real airtime, we need to continue to fill up the comments with factual corrections, anecdotal stories, and just plain volume.

When newly free ex-slave blacks in the south were being crushed under Jim Crow laws, it was the NRA that went south, and handed out rifles to them, taught them how to shoot them, and gave them some ammo. They then packed up, and went over to the next town, and did it all over again.

Robert, any truth to the rumor that this gun show they protested was in fact an ‘antique’ only gun show? If that’s true, it should be a wake up call to ALL gun owners, not even hunters, muzzleloaders, or antique collector’s will be safe from harassment

I really doubt gun grabbers are out numbering us like RF post says. But our victory yesterday in Illinois shows we can and hopefully will win. Keep up the calls and emails and make sure the majority of America the progunners voice is heard.

That poor little girl, you know she has no idea what the NRA is or does, yet her parents make her stand there with a sign. It like a bad car commercial where the 8 year old kid pretends to enjoy driving to pull on the heart strings of the stupid. By this point im fairly sure thats all that remains for the liberals, because the people with common sense walked out.

Are there any self proclaimed liberals on this forum who are still…..liberal?
Are you getting it now, or will it take the guns being taken from you before you finally see the light (by feeling the heat).

I am talking about the looney leftists who want the UN running the world and street bums to have the same money as brain surgeons. You are kind of an independence party guy. In any case, its the lib cats who are after yer gats.

Thanks RF, for showing the world what a whack job you are with your “guns.”
I learned about Weapons by serving in the military 4 years. I volunteered. I served overseas more than 3 of those 4 years, and I was in the Persian Gulf. How many of you gun nuts ever did anything, ever sweated, ever put your safety on the line, ever sacrificed? Other than pout, cry about the “nanny” state, b@tch about Obama, whine about your taxes while cheerfully drinking from the trough, or join the tea party and hide behind email? Never in my life have I felt the need to be armed (except now against you sickos).
Stop the madness! Responsible ownership, how about the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights, for heaven sakes, don’t keep rifles and handguns with your sick, disturbed child just because you can, ban assualt rifles and high capacity magazines, 100% background checks and penalties / restrictions on owning. Oh, yes, I do support having police at schools – because of the “gun” “cult”ure we have in your Ameri”k”a.
I agree with Cuomo, and Barack finally has some Bidenbone. No more massacres of children, for God’s sake, has the country sunk so low? In the name of affluence and the 2nd amendment, you allow 1st graders to be mowed down, criticize the adults for not packing, and then lecture the rest of us on your right? Shame on you. We have the right to live in safety. You Dinopublicans lost all major groups, now you’ll be on the ash heap of history – all because of your perverted ignorant love of “guns” and lack of common sense.

Congratulations on being the military. Unlike some here, I’m not going to abuse you for becoming a “paid mercenary for hire” or whatever the line is. You wanted to do it, you did it, good for you. What I will abuse you for is thinking you can use your military service to push a whole bunch of emotionally freighted bullshit without any reality to back it up. Oh, and ad hominems for good measure. Those are always helpful.

…ban assualt rifles and high capacity magazines…

This is tedious, I know, but an assault rifle is a very distinct thing, and it’s distinct by virtue of being fully automatic. Fully automatic weapons have been used virtually never (one instance I remember was a cop using his fully automatic duty weapon illegally, and I think there was one more). Of course, I know you meant “assault weapon,” which is a made up word that means exactly whatever someone wants it to mean. If the NY bill that’s being voted on today passes, “assault weapon” even includes any semiautomatic pistol that has the capability to accept a magazine greater than 10 rounds. In other words, three-quarters of the pistols in existence today. So given your assault rifle/assault weapon confusion (and you claim to have been in the military, natch), how am I supposed to give any credence to your opinion when you clearly can’t be bothered to do the basic research (which should be unnecessary given your military background) to get the nomenclature right? I guess… maybe I’m expected to respect your opinion simply because you feel so strongly about it?

SS, I also did my 4 years in the military, and so I just have a few questions for you. What happened to that oath you took to defend the constitution? What happened to the values that were taught to you when you were trained? Things like “duty”, “honor”, “respect” are not just words. Did you take anything with you, when you left? Did you learn anything, or did you just dump the entire experience from memory? I want you to re-read your own post and keep those words in mind, while you skim over the disrespect you showed to the flag you supposedly fought for. Misspelling America? Insulting people because they believe in American ideal (you volunteered to fight for). I bet you think that was clever don’t you? Where is the tolerance that everyone claims to have that never seems to show up? You need to do some soul searching, some research and some growing up. When I say you need to grow up, I’m not talking about age, I’m talking about wisdom. Use your noggin, they’re your rights too. The 2A is about protecting the people from a tyrannical government. When they take away “assault weapons” as you call them, do you think they will stop there? We already had the Patriot act that attacked Search&Seizure, and the NDAA which attacked Due Process. Then there is the Affordable Care Act, wihch attacked the 1st amendment. Now the 2A, what do you think happens after that? All the rest of them ::poof:: Little by little, they whittle away YOUR rights. Your apparent love and trust for politicians (any of them) will be your undoing. Read some history, especially foreign. For instance, pre-WW2 Germany, or perhaps pre-Soviet Russia, or even Cuba, or how about Venezuela, or China, or a dozen other countries. Also, if you want to share your point of view, how about doing it civilly?